


Three Times the Doctor Unexpectedly Met a Daughter

by wanderingstoryteller



Series: No one ever said this life would be simple [6]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, F/F, Female Alpha, Time Babies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-10-06 06:41:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17340485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderingstoryteller/pseuds/wanderingstoryteller
Summary: Chickens have a way of coming home to roost, or in this case children. Through the course of her adventures, the Doctor begins to run across daughters she sired in her current regeneration and before.





	1. Misca (Avia’s daughter)

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic in this series that's doesn't actually have any sex in it. I got the idea for it the other day and it was just too fun not to write. I thought it might be interesting to show what happens to some of the children the Doctor sired earlier in the series.  
> Future installments in the series will returned to the prior erotic format.

She had always meant to go to Tyco’s second moon at some point. She really had. She’d meant to do it sooner but somehow she just never got around to it. That tended to be the way of things for her, one crisis after another in a brilliant blur of running and pain and joy.

In the end the TARDIS took her there. One moment she was promising Yaz and the others a trip to the Shining Cove of Vontu and then the next she was stepping out onto a crowded city street.

Yaz stopped her before she could stride off in her rainbow bikini, flip-flops and rubber ducky pool inflatable.

“Wait, you need pants,” called Yaz.

“Why do I need pants?”

They had had this argument before, far more times than one would expect really.

Graham came to Yaz’s rescue. “Because it’s snowing out there and just looking at you is making me cold.” He had retreated very far from the door when the first gust of cold air entered the TARDIS and was currently shivering in his swim trunks and fluffy blue beach towel.

“Fine, I’ll go change,” sighed the Doctor. “Can I at least keep the inflatable duck?”

 

It was nearly a half hour before they all finally made it out of the TARDIS, sans duck floatie. The snow had grown heavier, falling almost in clumps instead of flakes. The city around them was alive with light and sound. Everything was garlanded in brilliant gold and green streamers and fake ivy vines had been wrapped around almost everything.

Shop windows were filled with displays of toys and food and other gifts. Ryan quickly became fascinated by something that looked like a fancy cake-pop. When they bought some off a vendor they quickly found that they were actually filled with strawberry ice cream.  

They wandered on, pausing to listen to a group of carolers singing Bohemian Rhapsody and then stopping again to watch a group of children running through the main square carrying sparklers.

Yaz wanted one of those, so did Ryan even if he was a bit too proud to admit it until the Doctor held a lit one out to him with a wild grin. Wonderful things fireworks, almost universal to any society that developed saltpeter. Graham relaxed on a bench, happily in possession of a mug of mulled wine, as the others ran around like the children that two of them still were in his eyes.

The Doctor was attempting to spell her name with her sparkler when something caught her eye, a shining neon light at the entrance of a shop just off the main square, _Carpe Librum_.

She froze in her step and a child ran smack into her. They both overbalanced and went down on the hard cobblestones. The Doctor threw out her arms and lost her sparkler, saving her head from hitting the stones. The child went down less gracefully, half on the doctor and half on an elbow.

She let out a cry of pain as her joint slammed the frozen stone. “Owe!”

They both lay stunned for an instant. The Doctor found herself looking into an almost familiar pair of incredibly young dark eyes. The scent of garden roses and sunlight washed over her, the smell of home, the smell of Gallifrey. She didn’t cry very often in her current regeneration, but seeing the first Gallifreyan child in several lifetimes nearly made her sob.

Then the child accidentally elbowed her in the face as she tried to stand up.

“Misca, sweetie what happened?” A tall curly haired blond woman righted  the girl, quickly looking her over for any injury.

A slight, dark haired woman knelt to offer the Doctor a hand. “I’m so sorry. Are you hurt? My daughter doesn’t always look where she’s going.”

She had the Doctor half pulled to her feet before she got a proper look at her face and and dropped her hand in shock. “Doctor!”

The Doctor stumbled but kept her balance this time. “Avia?”

“You know her?” asked the blond woman curiously, glancing over from bushing snow off the girl’s coat.

“You could say that.”

The Doctor looked at her and then the girl again. “I think we need to talk.”

 

In the end they went back to the bookshop and drank tea in the kitchen of the small cozy flat on the second floor. The Doctor had told her friends she needed to catch up with Avia and given them a credit chip to go get a meal at one of the cafe’s with the lovely outdoor stoves.

Yaz had been hesitant to go. She could see the warring emotions on the Doctor’s face. Yaz barely remembered most of the Mountains of Lost Hope adventure but she knew that the Doctor had mated Avia to spare her suffering through an unexpected heat alone. There was so much she wanted to ask but she also knew the Doctor well enough not to push.

The Doctor never sent away her companions lightly. She seldom did it at all unless she was trying to send them from danger, or if it was something deeply personal. Yaz suspected it was the later and she trusted her mate to tell her what was going on later. She felt the shadow of possessiveness and jealousy in her heart but quickly banished it. She could never have kept her sanity and been the Doctor’s mate if she let those feelings rule her. So she kissed the Doctor briefly and went off to dinner.

At the bookshop the blond haired woman took the child to put her to bed after a brief whispered conversation with Avia. The Doctor and the omega sat at a worn kitchen table, sipping chai tea. A small electric heater valiantly did the best it could to drive back the winter’s chill.

For once it took the Doctor a time to find her words. Avia nervously filled the silence. “It’s not much but it is home. Maggie and I took over the shop after my parents retired and moved to the coast.”

“Maggie is?” The Doctor tilted her head slightly towards the hall that the blond and the child had vanished down.

“My wife. I’ll introduce you properly when she comes back” Avia took note of the slightly worried frown that cross the Doctor’s face. “She’s my _second_ wife, Not the woman I’d just divorced when we met.”

“Good. You seem a lot happier than when I last saw you.”

The faint lines at the edge of the dark haired woman’s eyes deepened when she smiled. “I am, much, much happier than I ever thought I could be. I’m afraid you knew me at one of the darkest times in my life. I’m still grateful for your kindness then.”

Kindness wouldn’t have been the word the Doctor would have used exactly.

Avia tried to sip at her Chai but found it too hot. “I met Maggie about a two years after I had Misca. My parents ran a small press in the back of the shop back then, they were publishing one of Maggie’s books of poetry. Of course the book never sold that well, poetry never does, I got Maggie out of the deal though, so it wasn’t a complete loss. She’s a pretty well known poet these days, sometimes we even see a little money from her books, between that and the shop we do alright.” There was a fierce pride and warmth in her tone.  

“You love her,” it was a statement rather than a question.

“I do.”

“I’m happy for you.”

“What of you? You look as if you’ve barely aged a day though I’m already starting to go grey.

In truth, it had only been a few months for the Doctor. That was the funny thing about being a time traveler, meeting anyone twice could be a bit awkward. “I’m doing alright. You remember the human woman I was traveling with, Yaz?”

“She’s as cute as I remember her. She looks like she’s aged as well as you.” Suddenly Avia began to laugh softly. It was a wonderful sound. “You two got together didn’t you?”  

“Yea,” The Doctor couldn’t help but smile broadly.

“Good for you.”

The settled back for a moment, sipping a at their finally cooling tea. At last the Doctor set down her cup, shoulders slightly slumped. They couldn’t put off what they actually needed to talk about any more. “Misca’s mine isn’t she?”

“Yes.”

She had to cover her face. She’d already known it, known it on a bone deep level the moment she saw the child and yet it still overwhelmed her.

“I’d have told you if I could have but you didn’t exactly leave a forwarding address.”

Funny how sharp guilt could feel. “I’m so sorry.”

“For leaving me alone and pregnant after telling me you couldn’t get me pregnant or for not leaving a number? I don’t blame you for the first. I chose to be alone and I chose to have Misca. Tyco’s second moon isn’t like the main planet or first moon, I could have had a termination easily if I had wanted to. Now as for you being impossible to find afterwards…”

She offered a half smile to show she wasn’t actually angry. “It would have been nice to at least know what species you were, especially when the doctors told me my baby had two hearts. I had her DNA run before she was even born but they couldn't find a match. she took thirteen months to gestate, glowed sometimes when she was a baby, and started talking at three months. She began levitating things a month ago and I’ve no idea what to think of that.”

The Doctor blinked, “wait, she levitates things?”

“Yes, isn’t that normal for your species? Speaking of which you still need to tell me what that is.”

The Doctor took a breath, “I’m a Time Lord.”

“Those are just a children’s story.”

“I promise you we are very real.”

Avia held up her hand. “Wait before you say anything else. I want Maggie here.”

“Are you sure?”

“She’s Misca’s mother too.” She stood and left the Doctor sitting alone in the small kitchen. It was warm enough, even if there was a draft. When the Doctor looked out the window she could see the snow falling even harder. Lights from the street below reflected in the little crystals hung from the kitchen window, shining rainbows through the room.

Avia returned leading Maggie by the hand.

“Doctor this is Maggie my wife, Maggie this is the Doctor, Misca’s gene mother.”

The Doctor stood uncertainty.

A lot of things filled the other woman’s eyes. After a long, painful moment she offered the Doctor her hand. “You look a little like her.”  

They shook and then sat around the table. From the proximity of the handshake the Doctor briefly caught Maggie’s scent. She smelled faintly like sage and rain and was unmistakably an alpha. An unfamiliar alpha was living with a woman she had mated and raising her child. Her internal hackles rose, a rare thing for her. She pushed them down and offered an open smile.

Uncertainly the alpha returned it, “So I’m hoping you can explain the whole floating objects thing, because we’re almost out of teacups at this point.”

Unfortunately that was the one thing the Doctor couldn’t help them with. Hybrids could sometimes have unusual abilities. Her best guess was that Misca’s mixed heritage might have amplified the latent psychic abilities she inherited from her birth mother’s human variant. Time Lords could do a lot of things but they weren’t telekinetic, humans sometimes were although it wouldn’t become common for any of their variants for several centuries.

They talked for a long time. When they were done, the Doctor pressed a cellphone into Avia’s hand and made the long cold walk back to the TARDIS. She had wanted to see Misca, meet her properly but Maggie hadn’t wanted to wake the child. Maggie and Avia had asked her come back, they’d talk again, she’d meet the girl when it made sense.

Some part of herself, something deep and savage, wanted to go back and challenge the strange alpha who’d dared question her right to see her own daughter. How dare anyone keep her from a child she had sired? The ugliest depth of her soul whispered how easy it would be to steal Misca, raise her properly as a Time Lady.

She knew that part of herself for what it was, just another instinct of her current alpha form. She’d gotten used to instincts and hormones, she’d experienced them through every phase of life, every orientation, every gender, every dynamic. She hadn’t let anything like that get the better of her in a long time.

A calmer, truer part of herself remembered the kitchen. She thought of the crystals that shone in the window, the chipped plates drying in the rack, and the warm scent of stew simmering in a slow cooker on the counter. In her mind's eye she could see the children’s drawings, graded schoolwork, and family photos stuck to the fridge with mismatched magnets.

Her daughter was safe, well cared for and loved. She could give her a lot of things but she couldn’t give her that kitchen. Misca had the kind of home and a family she’d have given her very soul for when she was a boy in her first incarnation. She could do nothing to jeopardize that.  

She would need to tread carefully and respectfully to find how she fit into Misca’s life. She couldn’t mess this up, not when her daughter would need her to help understand her own unusual biology. If nothing else, maybe the Doctor could get to the bottom of the floating teacup issue.


	2. Shiva (Missy’s daughter)

Of all the things that the Doctor had expected to see when exiting the TARDIS on the eve of the Easter Rising in 1916 Ireland, Missy standing with a sulky teenager and a steamer trunk was not one of them.

Missy had her arms crossed and very fine example of her perpetual scowl on her lips. The girl nearly perfectly copied it. She was as ginger as the Doctor had ever dreamed of being and had her long wavy hair caught back in a nineties esc sparkly scrunchy. Her skinny young teenage frame was clad in a Rolling Stones T-shirt, torn jeans and converse sneakers. She had an Adventure Time backpack over one shoulder.

Missy shoved the teenager at the Doctor rather forcefully.

“Take her, for the love of Rassilon take her before I murder her. The nanny escaped a month ago and she’s been driving me bloody crazy.”

The Doctor blinked uncertainty at the teenager. She looked almost familiar. She had huge light brown eyes, so much like a boy she’d known so many lifetimes ago. When she caught her scent there was no mistaking that she was a Time Lady.

Her knees felt weak, and she’d have fallen if Yaz and Ryan hadn’t caught her. She had eyes only for Missy in that moment though.

“She’s ours?”

“Yes, yes, I got knocked up from that time we fucked during my heat. It was years ago for me, only a couple months for you with your current timeline.”

“You got pregnant. You had a baby, our baby and you never told me!”

The Time Lady sighed and rolled her eyes overly dramatically. The Doctor had known her long enough to see she she was hiding her real emotions behind a part.“Yes, yes, I know you’ll never forgive me. Honestly, considering that you tried to run off with our first child I think we’re even. Hell, you still owe me for never telling me about our granddaughter, Susan, until she was nearly grown.”

“Koschei…” There was so much pain and pleading in the Doctor’s voice that even Missy winced slightly. She turned her face away and leaned on her umbrella.

“Anyway, that’s all behind us now. I need you to watch her for a bit, either a couple months or a decade, I’m not sure. I have some very important matters to attend to and I really just can’t deal with her adolescent existential angst right now.”

The girl scowled. “I am right here you know.”

“Quiet sweetheart, the grownups are talking.” Miss turned back to the Doctor. “All her things are in that trunk. She’s had all her shots. She’s allergic to shellfish and also just seems to really hate peaches. She’s afraid of bunnies for some reason so keep her away from those.”

“Mom, your embarrassing me.” complained the girl.

Missy just kept going, like she was afraid she’d lose momentum if she stopped. “She’s already presented as an alpha and had her first false rut. I gave her a subdermal suppressant chip on her left arm. That will need replacing in about five years, unless you want her running after any omega in heat the way you seem to do in this regeneration.”

“Excuse me?” as overwhelmed as the Doctor was she could still feel insulted.

Missy gave her a long look, “Don’t play the innocent, I’ve already run across two of your bastards,”

“Wait, two?”

Miss didn’t elaborate on that, “Anyway. I’ve done the whole single mom gig for fourteen years. Now it’s your turn. Have fun. Try not to kill her, as tempting as it might be. Is there anything I’m forgetting?”

“Her name?” suggested the Doctor.

“Oh yes. Doctor meet your daughter, Shiva, Shiva, meet your gene mom, the Doctor.”  

“You named our daughter after a Hindu goddess of destruction?”

“It seemed appropriate, considering who’s child she is. Anyway. I’ve tons to do. Best be going.” She paused long enough to briefly hug her daughter. “Be good darling, or actually don’t. Be your usual self, your mother has it coming.”

Then she turned and stepped into a red phone box that had been hidden only a minute before. There was a brief stirring of wind and she was gone.

The Doctor and her companions were left staring at the teenager. The girl let out an aggravated sigh and snapped her fingers, causing her trunk to levitate.

“So you gonna show me my room or what?”

 

Shiva proved to be considerably less bratty than might have been expected of a child raised by Missy. She hid it well but she was clearly upset to have her life so completely and utterly altered. She had an expectedly quick temper and haughty attitude but she was also observant and intensely intelligent.

In her first few days on the TARDIS she was clearly trying to figure out who to trust and who to torment. The moment she realized that Yaz and the Doctor were mated she began to refer to her as her evil stepmother and mostly ignore her. Yaz took mild offense to this, especially as she‘d gone out of her way to make the girl feel welcome whens he first arrived.

Shiva initially mocked Graham for his age but quickly realized that she couldn’t get a rise out of him. Graham had put up with close to four years of Ryan’s initial hostility when he’d married Grace. A teenager simply being rude for no particular reason didn’t come even close to troubling him.

Oddly enough, she actually got along with Ryan. On the first day, as she was skulking around the ship, she found him in the den playing Super Smash Brothers on the Nintendo 64 that the Doctor had somehow gotten to work with her future TV. Wordlessly Ryan plugged in another controller and offered it to her and so a friendship was formed.

She couldn’t seem to make up her mind about the Doctor. She’d at first watched her with something almost approaching awe, apparently she’d heard a lot of stories. Her opinion began to plummet the first time the Doctor tried to hug her. It got even lower when the Doctor explained house rules at the TARDIS’s small scarred kitchen table.

“What do you mean no guns? How do I kill people I don’t like?”

“We don’t kill people we don’t like.”

“Why not?” She had the same pouty expression as her birth mother. It was a little terrifying to see it on such a sweet young face.

“Because we don’t kill.”

“Why not?”

“Because life is precious.”

“Precious?”

“Yes.”

She rolled her eyes, somewhat slowly in fact, as if she’d read in a book that it was what you were supposed to do to express exasperation. “Life isn’t precious. It’s cheap and easily destroyed. Mom always says that.”

“There are a lot of things your mom and I don’t agree on.”

“Well then she’s right and you're wrong.”

An almost sly smile turned half the doctor’s lip, “So, your mom is always right then? She’d be pleased to hear you said that.”

“What? No, she’s not always right either. She just says she is so I’ll do what she says.”

The Doctor tilted her head slightly, clearly enjoying the conversation, even as the girl became increasingly flustered. “So who’s right about everything then. You?”

Shiva slammed her hands on the table, “yes!”

“How do you know?”

“Know what?”

“That you're right about everything.”

“I just do!”

The Doctor raised an eyebrow.

Shiva pointed an angry finger at her, “your being mean and trying to trick me.”

“Dear one I do not know what life you lead before you came into my care, but I will never be deliberately cruel to you or try to trick you in any way.”

That threw the girl off balance. She slumped back into her chair. “Then what are you doing?”

“Teaching you how to think, it’s very important.”

She crossed her arms. “So if it’s so unclear who’s right, can I just carry a gun?”

“No, because it’s still my ship and you have to respect that.”

“Fine.”

 

Shiva still shot someone on her second outing off the the TARDIS. Their first trip had proven remarkably uneventful, rather boring in fact. They’d gone to picnic in a high mountain valley on the planet of Gavu. Aside from a swarm of rather marmot like blue creatures stealing one of the baskets, nothing noteworthy happened. As it was the basket with the fish-sticks and custard, only the Doctor was at all troubled.

Things went badly very quickly on their second trip. It was actually supposed to just be a grocery run. Apparently there were not enough sugary, salty, or pickled things in the TARDIS kitchen for a growing Timelord.

Yaz had originally assumed that Shiva was being a brat when she complained about the lack of candy or chips in the cabinets. She’d been even less impressed when the girl flat out refused to eat the rice, chicken, and broccoli that she’d made when it was her night to cook. It didn’t help that Shiva actually accused Yaz of trying to poison her with the broccoli before microwaving herself some mac and cheese.

The Doctor had later explained to her that Shiva wasn’t necessarily being unreasonable. Broccoli and most leafy green vegetables were mildly toxic to juvenile Timelords. As an adult Time Lady, the Doctor could safely eat almost all human foods and even largely survive off of an almost human diet. As an adolescent, Shiva couldn’t. She needed to primarily eat what humans would consider junk food.

All of this had led to a trip to the equivalent of a Sainsburys at the outer edge of the Great and Bountiful Human Empire. Instead of the grocery store parking lot they all stepped out into a massive protest march against the planets local government. Of course they got involved, it wasn’t in the Doctor to not to get involved.

There were rebels to help, terrible dark secrets to be uncovered and a local tyrant to be brought down. It all came to a head with the Doctor facing down a tank in a somewhat Tiananmen Square esque moment. Shiva saw the glint of the snipers rifle on the nearby roof.

She had a small blaster from her boot in half an instant, felling the sniper with a single shot before he could ever pull the trigger. The square exploded into chaos. The Doctor grabbed Shiva by the arm and bolted for the protection of the nearby buildings, the other companions in tow.

By some miracle they all made it. She pushed Shiva at Ryan. “Take her back to the TARDIS!”

Ryan was the only one she’s likely actually go back with. Graham she’d ignore and Yaz she’d try to give the slip.

“I can help. Let me help,” begged the teenager.

“No, go. It’s all too dangerous now. I can’t protect you.”

“Then you should come back to. That’s what Mom would do. She always says it best to run when things get bad.”

“No. I have to stop this before more people die.” Her deep green eyes were wide and a little wild.

For once Shiva did as she was told. She and Ryan made their way back to the TARDIS through the dark and often tear gas filled streets. Then they waited for hours. After standing about in the control room began to feel useless, Ryan made them both some hot chocolate with little marshmallows. Shiva loved those.

They played Super Smash Brothers somewhat listlessly for a bit. When it got late Ryan tried to tell Shiva to go to bed, it seemed like the grownup thing to say. She just looked at him and returned to the game. Eventually she fell asleep with the controller still in her hand. Ryan put a blanket over and went back to the consul room to wait.

He was starting to think he should go looking for them when at last the TARDIS door opened and a weary Doctor, Graham and Yaz traipsed in.

“How’d it go?”

“Good, the popular uprising is on track,” said the Doctor with a forced smile that faded quickly. “Where’s Shiva?”

“Asleep in the TV room.”

“Right.”

The Doctor strode past him, her face grimly set.

“Wait.”

The Doctor paused.

“What are you going to do?”  

She turned “What do you think I’m going to do? She broke the rules, she broke my only real rule. She carried a gun, she killed. She can’t stay on the TARDIS. I’m sending her back to her mother.”

“She saved your life,” said Ryan. “Doesn’t that count for something?”

“No. I warned her and she didn’t listen.”

Graham had been more than ready to go to bed but he leaned against the central consul instead. His feet and back really hurt. They had done a lot of running. “You warned me once and I didn’t listen either.”

“You did in the end. You didn’t kill Tzim-Shaw.”

“I shot him in the leg. You still let me stay.”

“That was different.”

“Different then throwing that Dalek into a star?”

“That was a Dalek, a monster.”

“And a man with a gun about to shoot an unarmed woman standing up to a tank isn’t?” asked Graham. “Send your daughter away for protecting you and she’ll never forgive you. She’s only been with us a week. If you really want her to become something other than who’s she’s been raised to be all her life, you’ll have to show her the way.”

“She killed,” the strength of her conviction had long since weakened.

“She’s a child and from what I can gather one raised by a psychopath. You didn’t really think she’d do what you said from the start did you?”

“Fair enough.” The Doctor took a deep breath. “I’ll go talk to her.”

If anyone ever asked, she’d have said she kept companions because it was a lot more fun to go have adventures with friends. Beyond that though, the truth was sometimes she just needed someone younger than herself to ground her, remind her of the greys between the sharp black and white of her own convictions.

The exhaustion of the day slowly descended upon her as she walked down the short hallway to the the dimly lit living room. A game over screen was still flashing on the TV.

Shiva was curled up into a small ball on the big green beanbag, under the fuzzy rainbow blanket that normally rested on the couch. Her fiery hair had come loose and framed her face like a halo of frizz. Her normally sharp features had softened, forehead un-creased and mouth slack.

For half an instant, if she ignored the hair, she reminded the Doctor of a son long since grown and dead. Her heart ached terribly and she saw the shadow of a granddaughter who’d gone the same way in her own mortal time. The ache of some losses never eased, never truly.

The Doctor slumped down into the second beanbag. The sound was enough to cause the girl’s eyes to slowly flicker open.

“Mom,” she mumbled, blinking into the darkness. Then she seemed to remember where she was and recognize the figure across from her. “Doctor.” She sat up, crossing her arms in anticipation of the rebuke she knew was coming. “I won’t apologize, not for saving your life, I won’t.”

“I’m not expecting you to.”

“You sending me back to Mom then?”

“No. Not sure I could find her to do that anyway.”

“So are you going to punish me?”

“No but I will need that gun though.”

Light brown eyes narrowed, “If you take it how will I protect myself, how will I protect you if you do something stupid like go stand in front of a tank again?”

“I’m going to give it back. Just let me see it for a moment.”

Grudgingly Shiva tugged up the blanket to retrieve her blaster from an ankle holster. “Mom told me to carry it you know. She said you’d try to forbid me but I had to anyway. She said you’d try as hard as you could to protect me but you might fail and I had to be able to protect myself.”

She couldn’t have hurt the Doctor worse if she’d slapped her. She couldn’t keep the pain from her face so she kept her eyes down as she accepted the small weapon. A quick scan told her the make and mark. A quick buzz and she’d made a few modifications. She handed it back.

“There. Now the lowest settings is set to stun most human sized opponent. ”

Shiva scowled. “Great now you’ve made it useless.”

“No, I’ve given you options.You might not want to kill every person you need to incapacitate. The second settings will still kill most creatures. I added a third setting that will let you burn through metal doors, it’s always good to have a way to escape locked rooms.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“Don’t go getting any bright ideas about testing out the stun setting on any of my companions. It’s still not perfect and will cause lasting damage.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” After a moment she added. “You know, you’re not like Mom describes you at all.”

“How’d she describe me?”

“Somewhere between a god and a bumbling fool.”

“Not sure about the first part, the second is pretty accurate though.”

“I’ve noticed.”

After another beat the Doctor asked, “So are you willing to stick around for a bit in spite of my shortfalls?”

“Yea, I think so.”


	3. Jenny (The Doctor’s Daughter)

It was one of those adventures that went badly. Try as the Doctor might, times where everybody lived, like that wonderful night in London during the blitz so long ago, were very rare. On this particular night the Doctor suspected she’d be lucky if she got her daughter, her companions, or even herself out alive.

There really wasn’t much hope of a good outcome when they were being hunted by eldritch shadow monsters through the depths of a salt mine along with the few remaining survivors of a distant mountain outpost colony

What made it worse was that all the survivors she was trying to protect were children and there were a lot of them. The colonists had managed to get all of them all safely into a hidden inner chamber when everything started to go to hell. When the Doctor and her companions entered the underground settlement they  found children’s toys but only the bodies of adults. The they knew that the children were taken or hidden and she’d prayed for the latter. People always hide the children when monsters or raiders come.

She’d wanted to send Shiva back to the TARDIS then, dead bodies and abandoned blood soaked teddy bears were never a good signs. They were already too deep in the mine though and the shadows were already moving. She hadn’t trusted that any of her companions could make it out without her and she’d had to know for certain what had happened to the missing children before they left.

Fortunately they found them quick behind a hidden wall panel that her sonic picked up. She’d opened it and found thirty children huddling together like frightened puppies, the older ones doing what they could to calm the fears of the smaller ones. The moment she brought the out as the very shadows at the edges of the cavern in which they stood began to twist and snarl. The monsters had been waiting.

The Doctor had tried to call the TARDIS to her, to evacuate them all, but for some reason it couldn’t come. Instead she’d been left to try and lead everyone back up to the freezing surface praying that the TARDIS was still there to take them all away. Light kept the monsters at bay, but they had very few lights left, just the sonic and a few flashlights and glow sticks.

Something horrible and tenticly tried to snatch one of the smallest girls right away. Ryan leapt into the shadows after her, catching the girls’ foot and pulling her back as unseen teeth and claws tore at him. By the time Graham got a light over them, Ryan was covered in gashes and half mad from fear but the little girl in his arms was unhurt.

She got them all up and moving as fast as she could. “Everyone stay close, take someone’s hand. Pick up the smaller children.”

To her surprise, Shiva actually grabbed. The slight girl already had a smaller child’s hand clasped with the other, caught somewhere between the need to be protected and to protect someone more vulnerable than herself. Her entire body was shaking and her eyes were wide with fear.

It occured to the Doctor, almost bizarrely, that this might have been the first time her daughter had ever truly feared for her life. They’d faced guns and a few big monsters in their earlier adventures but nothing truly terrifying. Missy had clearly trained Shiva to defend herself but she may have never actually taken her into any kind of danger. While not necessarily a careful person, Missy would have been sly enough to quickly flee from any situation she couldn’t control when she had a child in tow. Only the Doctor was fool enough to go running into mortal danger with her own daughter.

She squeezed Shiva’s hand. “I’m here dear one. I will protect you as long as I have breath in my body.”

“It’s what happens to me when you don’t that I’m scared of.”

“If I fall then run, run and keep going up towards the surface.”

“That was already my plan.” Sometimes she just sounded so much like her mother it made the Doctor’s heart hurt.

When she glanced at the other companions they seemed to be doing better. Ryan still had the nearly catatonic little girl in his arms, and another was clutching the edge of his shirt. His face was almost a set mask, he’d reached a point of fear so deep he’d come through it. As long as he didn’t stop he’d keep his calm until everything was over.

Graham had an infant caught up in one arm and a child’s hand in the other. He was speaking softly to them. He’d always been good at that sort of thing. Yaz had a seven year old on her back, the child had some manner of infirmity that kept him from walking easily. Her eyes were sharp and flinty as she constantly scanned the shadows for movement.

When the Doctor caught her gaze she found a familiar flicker of love and adoration. “You’ll get us out of this, you always do.”

Sometimes she really wished the companions that fell in love with her didn’t also always trust her so much. It didn’t matter how many times she told Yaz that she wasn’t perfect, that she had flaws, Yaz never seemed to fully believe her. Of course Yaz understood she had personality flaws, like being absent minded or impulsive, but she had an almost childlike faith that somehow the Doctor would always see them through perils hole. The thought that she might be the day she would fail her tore at the Doctor’s very soul.

“I will darling, I swear I will.”

They made their way quickly through dark empty chambers and long carved out corridors. The shadows shifted, sometimes even snarled but their lights kept the horrors at bay.Things went from bad to worse when they came the great council chamber. It was a huge and almost tolkien esc cavern, with strange columned carvings on the walls. It had been there when the colonists first arrived. If they’d been a smarter lot that probably would been a good indication that it wasn’t a good place to settle. Humans aren't known for their ability to heed warning signs.

All around them the cavern began to shake and tremble from the weight of the monstrosities crowding in. Huge rocks crashed down from the ceiling onto the cavern floor and smashed as the whole place began to cave in.  

They were halfway across the room when the creatures in the shadows began moving into the light. The Doctor barked at everyone to stay as close as they could. She could sense her companions at her back, sick from from and the utter panic that takes people when they have children in their care they have absolutely no way to protect.

The path ahead of them was blocked completely by strange limbed red eyed things.

“Doctor what do we do?” Shiva had been traveling with her for nearly six months but she still called her gene mother by name. Age fourteen was a little late to start calling a new acquaintance.

It was usually in moments like that in which the Doctor came up with brilliant plans. The truth was, she didn’t always, at least not before a lot of people died. This time she didn’t but a near miracle still occurred and like that frozen night in London everybody still lived.

The door at the far end of the hall burst open and three women rushed in, illuminated by the brilliant glow of a red phone box just beyond the mine’s front entrance.

“Dad! Come on, hurry!” called out a familiar chipper choice. A grey eyed blond girl with a pony tale held held up a colonial looking lantern that to illuminated half the cavern. Another girl with wavy red braid rushed past her.

She looked like a grown up version of Shiva and had what could only be described as a BFG in her hands. It proved to be some soft of laser cannon that didn’t even had a recoil. she began to fire on the shadow monsters, driving them back. The cavern shook and the woman barely stepped away from a falling rock the size of a rhino when it crashed down beside her.

“Misca, fucking do somethings about this, you damn psychic weirdo.”

Another woman, dark haired, tall and equality familiar, if also older than the Doctor remembered, her raised a hand and began to glow blue. Suddenly the rocks stopped falling. The monsters that Shiva hadn’t  already shot scuttled backwards as the blue light began to spread.

“Move! Move!” yelled Jenny and they did. The Doctor herded everyone forward, snatching up the slowest little boy into her arms as they went.

In spite of the pulse cannon and whatever Misca was doing, more and more of the monsters kept crawling over the dead ones. Somehow they all made it to the circle of light that Jenny’s lantern cast. They ran with her through the entrance of the mine as Shiva and Misca covered their retreat. The moment the last child set foot in the red phone box, the the two Time Ladies ceased to drive back the darkness and dove through the open sliding door. Jenny was ready at the controls to jump them away to safety. Shiva sent one particularly insistent monster back into the darkness with a solid kick before Misca slammed the sliding door shut.

There was a long beat of stunned silence before Jenny chirped, “Hey Dad, did you miss me? It turns out that I was actually not quite dead.”  

The Doctor had not fainted for several regenerations but she was sorely tempted in that moment.

Then she was desperately hugging a daughter she thought she had lost forever. She did cry then. She hadn’t really when she’d first lost her but now she did.

“I don’t understand.” She pulled back just enough to look into the young woman’s face. More than a decade had past since she’d last seen her and though her hair was still golden there was just the faintest hint of laugh lines forming at the corner of her eyes, at least when she smiled like she was doing in that moment.

“I regenerated after you left.”

A ocean of guilt threatened to tug the Doctor down. “How long after.”

“A couple hours, I’m not sure. It’s okay Dad. There is no way you could have known.”

“I should have stayed. I just...I didn’t think there was any chance. Your body showed no sign and Time Lords always regenerate right away.”

Jenny put a finger on the Doctor’s nose, “It’s okay Dad, calm down. Let’s just be happy for a moment before you get all angsty and regretful.”  

“I am so very, very happy,” After a moment she pulled back from Jenny enough to consider the other women as well, “Also how did you find your sisters, how did you find me, and are we in Missy’s TARDIS?”

“It’s mine now, has been since I stole it from my mom,” said the older Shiva.

“You stole Mom’s TARDIS?” the younger Shiva was staring at herself with a mix of uncertainty and awe. By any standards, especially those of a young teenager, the older Shiva was very cool looking. She was tall and had a ton of ear piercings, a worn brown leather WWII bomber jacket, Metallica T-shirt, ripped jeans and combat boots. She was also still holding the giant gun.

“Well she stole it from Gallifrey first. The Doctor stole hers as well, so I was just carrying on the family tradition.”

Shiva reached a hesitant hand towards the jacket, “If I touch you will we flicker out of existence?”

“I don’t think so. This moment was probably supposed to happen, especially since I vaguely remember it.”

Shiva’s restraint broke as she touched the soft leather of the sleeve, rubbing it between her fingers. Neither girl nor woman vanished. “So I grow up to be you then.”

“Yea, in a weird way you seeing me now sort of causes it. At least, that’s how I remember it. I saw myself with my own ship with two sisters at my side out having adventures and decided that was what I wanted out of life.”

“Awesome.” Her eyes were practically glittering and the hero worship was hard to miss. Like Missy, Shiva had an egotistical streak, hers just manifested in its own unique way.

“On the other hand,” said Misca, “my younger self can’t know anything about this.” She was giving the Doctor a pointed look.

She dressed very simply, black slacks and practical walking shoes. A grey shirt with embroidered dragons and a long black coat of some artificial material that clearly had a lot of pockets. As an adult she’d lost the last remnants of baby fat that had softened her face as a child. Her features were lean and foxlike, just like her birth mothers. Her frown though, she got that from the Doctor. It was unclear yet if she also had her smile.

“Even that you have sisters?” asked the Doctor.

“I have no memory of you doing it. Maybe you could have introduced my younger self to Shiva, if this hadn’t happened, but you can’t now. She’s rubbish at keeping things to herself, even as an adult. If she and I meet, she’ll tell me about this and if you tell me about her, I’ll probably go looking for her before I’m supposed to meet her.”

“Hey offense taken,” said the older Shiva. “I keep secrets just fine.”

“What like how you showed Jenny where I hid the snickerdoodles?”

“She bribed me with gummy candy, you know that’s my weakness.”

“Which is why I don’t tell you things like that anymore.”

“Ladies,” said Graham, looking up from the little girl he had finally managed to calm, “while this reunion is all well and good, we need to get these kids somewhere that feels safer and warmer to them than the bridge of a TARDIS. Also, my grandson is still bleeding.”

The Doctor clapped her hands, “Right, first things first. We should probably retrieve my TARDIS.”

“I’ll help patch up the companion. Jenny, can you help the other companions get the kids to the dormitory room? Shiva, can you pilot our TARDIS back to the Doctor’s TARDIS so that she can retrieve it? We can move both ships to a safe place and then reconvene.”

There was a quick nod of heads and everyone sprung into motion. While Shiva was clearly the red TARDIS’s pilot, Misca seemed to be its captain. Considering the personalities of the three women it was a reasonable arrangement.

There were moments in her life that filled the Doctor with joy, helping her grown daughter pilot a TARDIS was one of them. TARDISes were actually designed to have multiple pilots. She and the older Shiva moved seamlessly around the small space, pulling levers and moving toggles.

“How did you know when and where to come? Was it the memory?”

“No, the details were always a little too foggy. We just got a distress signal and followed it. It wasn’t until we materialized outside the Mines of Madness that I realized what was happening. You are just lucky that we had a laser pulse gun and a Lantern of All Light. I have no recollection of them from the incident. Even the adventures where we acquired those didn’t jog the memory.”

“Funny thing time, it can be a bit wibbly wobbly.”

“Timey wimey,” said Shiva affectionately. “I know Mom, you taught me all about it.”

Words have a lot of power, even small ones, especially ones like _mom_ and _dad_. Tears began to fill the Doctor’s eyes and she fought them down, her hand suddenly stilled on a lever. She was afraid to look up or her emotions would overcome her.

“I love you so much.”

“I know.”

“So we work out alright then? We figure out how to be family?”

“Yea, we do.” Shiva crossed the space between them, pulling the shorter woman into a hug. “We have a rough start, and we do fight a lot, but in the end we are family. My birth mom always understood me better but you always helped me be more than I was. Between the two of you, I turn out alright. At least I think I have.”

“You have dear one.”

 

In the infirmary, Misca set about bandaging Ryan’s injuries. He’d done a good job of hiding it, but he was in a lot of pain. When he took his shirt off, his back and sides and arms were all a mess of long ugly gashes.

Misca set about cleaning them quickly and efficiently with a orange antiseptic that fizzed and stung.

“This should get rid of any infection or curse, at least I think it should. Sometimes I really wish I studied medicine instead of epic poetry. If I had known I was going to go adventuring I really would have, although sometimes the poetry proves useful as well.”

That did not particularly reassure Ryan, but he just gritted his teeth and endured. He talked to distract himself from the burning sensation of the spray.“You been doing this long then, with your sisters and whatnot?”

“About a year now. One day I was sitting on the university quad grading terrible papers about Beowulf and suddenly a big red box appeared out of nowhere. Two really odd women popped out, said they were my sisters, and asked if I wanted to go traveling. Of course I said yes.”

“Sounds like my story, except it was the Doctor and it took us a while to find her box. Also hers was blue.”

Misca’s smile was subtle, but it was there, “that’s the Doctor alright, she just pops in and out of people’s lives. I never could figure out if she was forgetful or just a terrible pilot. She missed my thirteenth birthday although she promised to come, but showed up every day for a week afterwards because she felt so guilty. She said she’d overshot somehow and couldn’t go back to the day she missed.” There wasn’t exactly hurt in her voice, it was something more complicated, an odd mix of of fondness and longing.

“She really is just a rubbish pilot.” Ryan felt slightly disloyal for saying it, but it was true. “We don’t actually end up where we want to go about half the time, that or the TARDIS gets other ideas.”

Misca began to use a bottle of foamy green spray that seemed to seal and close the injuries. It cooled everything it touched and eased the pain.

The cessation of subtle agony made Ryan almost slap happy. “So none of you or your sisters picked a silly Time Lord name like the Doctor and the Missy use?”

“Those aren't Time Lord names. Time Lord names are different and kind of hard to understand, Shiva told me hers once and it sounded funny. What the Doctor or the Mistress have are just self appointed titles. Honestly what would I even pick? The Junior Assistant Profession wouldn’t sound very impressive.” She was smiling properly now.  

That made Ryan laugh, which was a mistake because that pulled on nearly healed skin.

“What about the three of you, don’t you need a group name? The Doctor can’t seem to decide between Team Tardis or Fam or something for us.”

Misca shook her head as she went to retrieve a clean, oversized t-shirt form the cabinet. There were a lot of spare, oversized clothes in there, like this wasn’t the first time someone whose clothes were torn or bloodied had been treated in the infirmary.

“I wanted to call us the Weird Sisters, Shiva wanted to be the Big Fucking Heroes (BFH)  and Jenny wanted the Travelers, We’ve never been able to agree between us so really we’re just Jenny, Shiva and Misca in a big red time and space traveling box.

“Not very snappy that,”

“That’s life for you.”

 

It took a long time to get the children settled down. They had just lost everything and had their worst nightmare come true. The dormitory room they brought them too wasn’t very cheery either, just a bunch of hard metal bunks with thin foam mattresses and industrial white sheets.

“It appears everytime we end up with refugees on the TARDIS,” explained Jenny. “I’ve tried telling her we need something homier but this is what she gives us.”

“It will do,” said Yaz.

The kids didn’t want to lie down, didn’t want to do anything but sit all together in a huddled lump. The little ones kept crying.

Jenny went to a cupboard and took down a bunk of high tech MRE’s. She needed onto snap each one once and they heated themselves. Graham and Yaz helped her hand the food out to the kids. They’d clearly grown up with that sort of thing because most of them ate the mac and cheese and brownies. They handed around plastic cups of something that kind of smelled like apple juice.

When that was done, Graham gathered them up in a circle and told them a long rambling story about a fox and a hair that wasn’t scary at all and went on and on until nearly everyone’s head began to lull. They carried the smallest ones to the bunks and the others went on their own.

Then very gently, very sweetly, in almost but not quite perfect pitch, Jenny sang a lullaby. No one in her own life had ever sung one to her, which was why she’d always loved them so dearly. When all the children were asleep, they all sunk down onto one of the bunks to sit. They were both utterly physically and emotionally drained.

Graham was holding the sleeping infant. There wasn’t a crib and he was fairly sure you weren’t supposed to just lay babies down unattended on bunks. He didn’t know much at all about babies, although Jenny had helped him to get this one to take a bottle earlier. Jaz had one of the sleeping toddlers in her lap. She was clearly afraid to move and cause the child to wake and need to be bedded down again. Jenny alone had managed to not end up with one in her arms.

“Poor things have no one left in the world,” said Graham.

“They’ve each other, that’s something,” Jenny tilted her blond head up to look at the blank white ceiling above them. “It’s both more and less then I had when I started out. I had no one, but at least I was already fully grown and able to take care of myself.”

“Don’t tell me you sprung out of the Doctor’s head fully formed like Athena,” said Yaz.

“What’s Athena?”

“Ancient earth goddess, doesn’t matter. What I mean is, how could you have been born fully grown?” Yaz hoped she didn’t sound rube, she was just very curious.

“A sort of gene extrapolate machine made me with the Doctor’s DNA. I’ve only been alive for about ten years at this point. It’s a long story but I stepped into the world as an adult with a gun in my hand. Dad wasn't’ very happy to see me at first, especially since they took his DNA without his permission. He didn’t like the gun either. Then I got killed and he didn’t know I would regenerate, so he left. I woke up alone and went to go explore the universe and see if I could find him.”

“And now you have,” said Graham. “Although she might be a bit older and more female than you recall.”

Jenny shrugged, “Also more blond. I’m more worried about now our timelines are now all wonky. My sisters present is the Doctor’s future and I guess that means mine is too. When Shiva’s TARDIS led her to me, it took her backwards in her back in time and then she brought me to her own present.”

Graham blinked at her tiredly, “You are loosing me lass. I’m no good at this technical stuff”

Jenny smiled sadly, “Sorry, I always talk a bit too much, I get it from Dad. What I mean is, I jumped ahead in time and now live about ten years in the Doctor’s future. There is no me in the Doctor’s present.”

“Ah, well I think she is currently in the consul room, so if you want to talk with her you should probably go do that while you have the chance.” He had always been a practical man. “Go on, We’ll keep an eye on these ones.”

“Thank you. You are very kind you know.” Jenny kissed him on the cheek, lips as light as a butterflies wing and hurried off.

 

Retrieving the Doctor’s TARDIS proved the simplest task that lay ahead of them. Figuring out what to do with the kids proved more complicated. The company the colonists had been working for wanted to just send the children on to another colony that had a low population. The space station the colony ship had come from offered to put them all in an orphanage. When the Doctor went through and talked to all the children she quickly learned their parents had come from multiple different planets and some had been born before they arrived at the colony and some after.

With the TARDIS they were able to take most of them back across the distance of space to grandparents and aunts and uncles. For a few though, there was no one, or at least no one who wanted to take them, so the Doctor found those children someone. She always kept a list of good places she found in her travels. Sometimes people in those places even owed her favors.

They left one infant in the arms of a childless couple on the seventh moon of Vagu. They left two toddlers with a big farmy family on New New New Earth. One little girl they took to a boarding school at the end of the universe. In the end they found a safe place for everyone.

When it was all said and done, the Doctor hugged her three grown daughters and sent them on their way.If there was one thing of which she was certain, it was that they would cross paths again.That was just how her life worked.

The next time she parked the TARDIS, she found Missy waiting impatiently, still in possession of her own red vesel.

“I thought you said maybe a decade,” said the Doctor, closing the door before any of her companions could follow her out.

“I also said it could only be for a couple months and I have found that I miss the little hellraiser. Now come on hand her over.”

The Doctor crossed her arms and didn’t move, back against the door of her TARDIS.

Missy sighed dramatically, “Oh darling don’t look so sad. I will bring her back when she gets on my nerves again. Considering the age she’s at, that won’t be long.”

“Do I get any say in this custody agreement?”

“No, none whatsoever, but if you fight me on this, I will find a way to snatch her back and then I’ll take her where you’ll never find her, just for spite.”

“You would.”

Everything inside of the Doctor cried out for her to rush back into the TARDIS and run away. Maybe she could take Shiva where Missy would never find her. Of course, then she’d be robbing Shiva of her birth mother and forcing her to hide.

One thing the Doctor had learned over time, was that while she almost always win when she fought Missy, but the price was usually so high it was nearly as bad as losing. The only way to really come out ahead with her, was to not fight at all. If she fought Missy over Shiva, she’d lose or hurt her daughter. She loved her too much to let either of those things happen.

She turned to the door of the TARDIS, “I’ll go tell her to pack her trunk.”   

“Really,” huffed Missy, “It’s not as if you haven’t got, or at least will have, six others. Go spend some time with them.”

The Doctor whirled around. “What?”

Missy had on her perfect feline with avian in stomach grin, “I ran into all seven of them traveling together in a TARDIS that Shiva clearly steals from me at some point in the future. They called themselves the the Pleiades.”

  
  



End file.
